Primordial Soup
by ElliotJA
Summary: The Doctor and Martha encounter a new and quite unusual form of life.


"Doctor?" Martha Jones called. "I think you might want to come and have a look at this."

"Hmm?" the Doctor murmured in response, peering in an engrossed manner at a beautifully exotic alien flower. Then, putting his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, he began strolling over to where Martha stood at the other end of the clearing in the forest. "What is it, Martha?"

Martha had her back to him, and seemed to be looking at something on the ground in front of her. "This is an alien planet, right?" she said. "A long way off from Earth, in space and time? So...how'd _that_ get here?" Reaching her side, the Doctor frowned as he looked down at what Martha was pointing at: A tin of tomato soup, clearly marked as a brand commonly sold in shops on Earth in the early twenty-first century, lying on its side in the soil.

"Blimey," he muttered, bending down to pick the tin up, noticing that it was cracked open and empty. "Well, there could be any number of explanations...alien time traveller could've popped by Earth in your time for some crub, taken it back here to eat...perhaps it fell through a space-time rift...they're a lot more common than you might think, can drag anything to just about anywhere and anywhen. Can be a real nuisance. There's a really big one in - "

His attention was diverted then by the sound of rustling in the tall grass a few feet away. The Doctor stood up as the noise of movement got closer. And then he and Martha gasped as, from out of the grass, emerged a creature. It was quite small, barely coming up to their knees, just a lump composed of some red-orange, gelatinous substance, supported on two spindly appendages. No eyes or mouth were visible. "Er...hi!" Martha said somewhat awkwardly, remembering that the Doctor frequently opened relations this way. The new arrival was unresponsive, remaining where it stood at the edge of the grass, seemingly observing the two visitors. "It's okay," Martha continued, "We're not gonna hurt you." Slowly, warily, the creature took a few steps closer.

The Doctor smiled. "That's the ticket! Hello there, little fella! Nice to meet you. It's alright, nothing to be scared of now." Carefully, he hunkered down and extended his arm, and Martha grinned, reminded of someone trying to befriend a timid stray dog or cat.

It was then that her senses detected something. Not a sight, not a sound...a smell. One she'd already noticed here, but was now stronger. And she thought she knew where it was coming from. "Doctor, do you smell that?" she asked.

"I know," the Doctor replied. "Tomato soup. Our little friend here is a living blob of tomato soup! Oh, isn't that just amazing! That's brilliant!"

"But how could it have happened?" Martha wondered aloud.

"Oh, again, could be just about anything," said the Doctor. "But I suspect that when the tin arrived here and broke open, the soup came in contact with some biological agent in the atmosphere, and the resulting reaction caused it to develop into a very basic lifeform." He looked up at her, grinning. "Primordial soup!" Then his expression changed slightly. "Can it evolve, I wonder? It's in its infancy now...what might it become?"

"Well we got the TARDIS," said Martha. "Let's find out!"

OOOOOOOO

"Okay, here we are," the Doctor said as the TARDIS ground to a halt and he sprinted from the console to the door with Martha close at his heels, "Same planet, roughly the same spot, half a million years in the future, give or take."

Martha gasped as she and the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS and found themselves on a balcony overlooking the streets of a fantastic, glittering city of graceful buildings. Everywhere could be seen tall, slender, humanoid figures of the same orange liquid as the being they had earlier encountered, along with the occasional human and alien, all at peace. "And to think, this is all from that one soup tin," remarked Martha.

"Life," the Doctor commented. "It never stops being amazing!" Then he turned to Martha. "I don't know about you, but I'm famished. Fancy getting something to eat?"

"Yeah," replied Martha, "I could just about murder some tomato soup."

"Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed in mock outrage, their eyes twinkling with mischievious amusement as they walked off together to explore.


End file.
